THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIAEVAL CHORUS MUSIC
It has already been noted that the music of the Catholic Church has
passed through three typical phases or styles, each complete in itself,
bounded by clearly marked lines, corresponding quite closely in respect
to time divisions with the three major epochs into which the history of
the Western Church may be divided. These phases or schools of
ecclesiastical song are so far from being mutually exclusive that both
the first and second persisted after the introduction of the third, so
that at the present day at least two of the three forms are in use in
almost every Catholic congregation, the Gregorian chant being employed in
the song of the priest and in the antiphonal psalms and responses, and
either the second or third form being adopted in the remaining
offices.[63]
Since harmony was unknown during the first one thousand years or more of
the Christian era, and instrumental music had no independent existence,
the whole vast system of chant melodies was purely unison and
unaccompanied, its rhythm usually subordinated to that of the text.
Melody, unsupported by harmony, soon runs its course, and if no new
principle had been added to this antique melodic method, European music
would have become petrified or else have gone on copying itself
indefinitely. But about the eleventh century a new conception made its
appearance, in which lay the assurance of the whole magnificent art of
modern music. This new principle was that of harmony, the combination of
two or more simultaneous and mutually dependent parts. The importance of
this discovery needs no emphasis. It not only introduced an artistic
agency that is practically unlimited in scope and variety, but it made
music for the first time a free art, with its laws of rhythm and
structure no longer identical with those of language, but drawn from the
powers that lie inherent in its own nature. Out of the impulse to combine
two or more parts together in complete freedom from the constraints of
verbal accent and prosody sprang the second great school of church music,
which, likewise independent of instrumental accompaniment, developed
along purely vocal lines, and issued in the contrapuntal chorus music
which attained its maturity in the last half of the sixteenth century.
This mediaeval school of _a capella_ polyphonic music is in many respects
more attractive to the student of ecclesiastical art than even the far
more elaborate and brilliant style which prevails to-day. Modern church
music, by virtue of its variety, splendor, and dramatic pathos, seems to
be tinged with the hues of earthliness which belie the strictest
conception of ecclesiastical art. It partakes of the doubt and turmoil of
a skeptical and rebellious age, it is the music of impassioned longing in
which are mingled echoes of worldly allurements, it is not the chastened
tone of pious assurance and self-abnegation. The choral song developed in
the ages of faith is pervaded by the accents of that calm ecstasy of
trust and celestial anticipation which give to mediaeval art that
exquisite charm of naivete and sincerity never again to be realized
through the same medium, because it is the unconscious expression of an
unquestioning simplicity of conviction which seems to have passed away
forever from the higher manifestations of the human creative intellect.
Such pathetic suggestion clings to the religious music of the Middle Age
no less palpably than to the sculpture, painting, and hymnody of the same
era, and combines with its singular artistic perfection and loftiness of
tone to render it perhaps the most typical and lovely of all the forms of
Catholic art. And yet to the generality of students of church and art
history it is of all the products of the Middle Age the least familiar.
Any intellectual man whom we might select would call himself but scantily
educated if he had no acquaintance with mediaeval architecture and
plastic art; yet he would probably not feel at all ashamed to confess
total ignorance of that vast store of liturgic music which in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries filled the incense-laden air of those
very cathedrals and chapels in which his reverent feet so love to wander.
The miracles of mediaeval architecture, the achievements of the Gothic
sculptors and the religious painters of Florence, Cologne, and Flanders
are familiar to him, but the musical craftsmen of the Low Countries,
Paris, Rome, and Venice, who clothed every prayer, hymn, and Scripture
lesson with strains of unique beauty and tenderness, are only names, if
indeed their names are known to him at all. Yet in sheer bulk their works
would doubtless be found to equal the whole amount of the music of every
kind that has been written in the three centuries following their era;
while in technical mastery and adaptation to its special end this school
is not unworthy of comparison with the more brilliant and versatile art
of the present day.
The period from the twelfth century to the close of the sixteenth was one
of extraordinary musical activity. The thousands of cathedrals, chapels,
parish churches, and convents were unceasing in their demands for new
settings of the Mass and offices. Until the art of printing was applied
to musical notes about the year 1500, followed by the foundation of
musical publishing houses, there was but little duplication or exchange
of musical compositions, and thus every important ecclesiastical
establishment must be provided with its own corps of composers and
copyists. The religious enthusiasm and the vigorous intellectual activity
of the Middle Age found as free a channel of discharge in song as in any
other means of embellishment of the church ceremonial. These conditions,
together with the absence of an operatic stage, a concert system, or a
musical public, turned the fertile musical impulses of the period to the
benefit of the Church. The ecclesiastical musicians also set to music
vast numbers of madrigals, chansons, villanellas, and the like, for the
entertainment of aristocratic patrons, but this was only an incidental
deflection from their more serious duties as ritual composers. In quality
as well as quantity the mediaeval chorus music was not unworthy of
comparison with the architectural, sculptural, pictorial, and textile
products which were created in the same epoch and under the same
auspices. The world has never witnessed a more absorbed devotion to a
single artistic idea, neither has there existed since the golden age of
Greek sculpture another art form so lofty in expression and so perfect in
workmanship as the polyphonic church chorus in the years of its maturity.
That style of musical art which was brought to fruition by such men as
Josquin des Pres, Orlandus Lassus, Willaert, Palestrina, Vittoria, the
Anerios, the Gabrielis, and Lotti is not unworthy to be compared with the
Gothic cathedrals in whose epoch it arose and with the later triumphs of
Renaissance painting with which it culminated.
Of this remarkable achievement of genius the educated man above mentioned
knows little or nothing. How is it possible, he might ask, that a school
of art so opulent in results, capable of arousing so much admiration
among the initiated, could have dominated all Europe for five such
brilliant centuries, and yet have left so little impress upon the
consciousness of the modern world, if it really possessed the high
artistic merits that are claimed for it? The answer is not difficult. For
the world at large music exists only as it is performed, and the
difficulty and expense of musical performance insure, as a general rule,
the neglect of compositions that do not arouse a public demand. Church
music is less susceptible than secular to the tyranny of fashion, but
even in this department changing tastes and the politic compromising
spirit tend to pay court to novelty and to neglect the antiquated. The
revolution in musical taste and practice which occurred early in the
seventeenth century--a revolution so complete that it metamorphosed the
whole conception of the nature and purpose of music--swept all musical
production off into new directions, and the complex austere art of the
mediaeval Church was forgotten under the fascination of the new Italian
melody and the vivid rhythm and tone-color of the orchestra. Since then
the tide of invention has never paused long enough to enable the world at
large to turn its thought to the forsaken treasures of the past.
Moreover, only a comparatively minute part of this multitude of old works
has ever been printed, much of it has been lost, the greater portion lies
buried in the dust of libraries; whatever is accessible must be released
from an abstruse and obsolete system of notation, and the methods of
performance, which conditioned a large measure of its effect, must be
restored under the uncertain guidance of tradition. The usages of chorus
singing in the present era do not prepare singers to cope with the
peculiar difficulties of the _a capella_ style; a special education and
an unwonted mode of feeling are required for an appreciation of its
appropriateness and beauty. Nevertheless, such is its inherent vitality,
so magical is its attraction to one who has come into complete harmony
with its spirit, so true is it as an exponent of the mystical submissive
type of piety which always tends to reassert itself in a rationalistic
age like the present, that the minds of churchmen are gradually returning
to it, and scholars and musical directors are tempting it forth from its
seclusion. Societies are founded for its study, choirs in some of the
most influential church centres are adding mediaeval works to their
repertories, journals and schools are laboring in its interest, and its
influence is insinuating itself into the modern mass and anthem, lending
to the modern forms a more elevated and spiritual quality. Little by
little the world of culture is becoming enlightened in respect to the
unique beauty and refinement of this form of art; and the more
intelligent study of the Middle Age, which has now taken the place of the
former prejudiced misinterpretation, is forming an attitude of mind that
is capable of a sympathetic response to this most exquisite and
characteristic of all the products of mediaeval genius.
In order to seize the full significance of this school of Catholic music
in its mature stage in the sixteenth century, it will be necessary to
trace its origin and growth. The constructive criticism of the present
day rests on the principle that we cannot comprehend works and schools of
art unless we know their causes and environment. We shall find as we
examine the history of mediaeval choral song, that it arose in response
to an instinctive demand for a more expansive form of music than the
unison chant. Liturgic necessities can in no wise account for the
invention of part singing, for even today the Gregorian Plain Song
remains the one officially recognized form of ritual music in the
Catholic Church. It was an unconscious impulse, prophesying a richer
musical expression which could not at once be realized,--a blind revolt
of the European mind against bondage to an antique and restrictive form
of expression. For the Gregorian chant by its very nature as
unaccompanied melody, rhythmically controlled by prose accent and
measure, was incapable of further development, and it was impossible that
music should remain at a stand-still while all the other arts were
undergoing the pains of growth. The movement which elicited the art of
choral song from the latent powers of the liturgic chant was identical
with the tendency which evolved Gothic and Renaissance architecture,
sculpture, and painting out of Roman and Byzantine art. Melody
unsupported soon runs its course; harmony, music in parts, with contrast
of consonance and dissonance, dynamics, and light and shade, must
supplement melody, adding more opulent resources to the simple charm of
tone and rhythm. The science of harmony, at least in the modern sense,
was unknown in antiquity, and the Gregorian chant was but the projection
of the antique usage into the modern world. The history of modern
European music, therefore, begins with the first authentic instances of
singing in two or more semi-independent parts, these parts being
subjected to a definite proportional notation.
A century or so before the science of part writing had taken root in
musical practice, a strange barbaric form of music meets our eyes. A
manuscript of the tenth century, formerly ascribed to Hucbald of St.
Armand, who lived, however, a century earlier, gives the first distinct
account, with rules for performance, of a divergence from the custom of
unison singing, by which the voices of the choir, instead of all singing
the same notes, move along together separated by octaves and fourths or
octaves and fifths; or else a second voice accompanies the first by a
movement sometimes direct, sometimes oblique, and sometimes contrary. The
author of this manuscript makes no claim to the invention of this manner
of singing, but alludes to it as something already well known. Much
speculation has been expended upon the question of the origin and purpose
of the first form of this barbarous orgunum or diaphony, as it was
called. Some conjecture that it was suggested by the sound of the ancient
Keltic stringed instrument crowth or crotta, which was tuned in fifths
and had a flat finger-board; others find in it an imitation of the early
organ with its several rows of pipes sounding fifths like a modern
mixture stop; while others suppose, with some reason, that it was a
survival of a fashion practised among the Greeks and Rornans. The
importance of the organum in music history has, however, been greatly
overrated, for properly speaking it was not harmony or part singing at
all, but only another kind of unison. Even the second form of organum was
but little nearer the final goal, for the attendant note series was not
free enough to be called an organic element in a harmonic structure. As
soon, however, as the accompanying part was allowed ever so little
unconstrained life of its own, the first steps in genuine part writing
were taken, and a new epoch in musical history had begun.
The freer and more promising style which issued from the treadmill of the
organum was called in its initial stages discant (Lat. _discantus_), and
was at first wholly confined to an irregular mixture of octaves, unisons,
fifths and fourths, with an occasional third as a sort of concession to
the criticism of the natural ear upon antique theory. At first two parts
only were employed. Occasional successions of parallel fifths and
fourths, the heritage of the organum, long survived, but they were
gradually eliminated as hollow and unsatisfying, and the principle of
contrary motion, which is the very soul of all modern harmony and
counterpoint, was slowly established. It must be borne in mind, as the
clue to all mediaeval music, that the practice of tone combination
involved no idea whatever of chords, as modern theory conceives them. The
characteristic principle of the vastly preponderating portion of the
music of the last three centuries is harmony, technically so called,
_i.e._, chords, solid or distributed, out of which melody is primarily
evolved. Homophony, monody--one part sustaining the tune while all others
serve as the support and, so to speak, the coloring material also--is now
the ruling postulate. The chorus music of Europe down to the seventeenth
century was, on the other hand, based on melody; the composer never
thought of his combination as chords, but worked, we might say,
horizontally, weaving together several semi-independent melodies into a
flexible and accordant tissue.[64]
The transition from organum to discant was effected about the year 1100.
There was for a time no thought of the invention of the component
melodies. Not only the _cantus firmus_ (the principal theme), but also
the counterpoint (the melodic "running mate"), was borrowed, the second
factor being frequently a folk-tune altered to fit the chant melody,
according to the simple laws of euphony then admitted. In respect to the
words the discant may be divided into two classes: the words might be the
same in both parts; or one voice would sing the text of the office of the
Church, and the other the words of the secular song from which the
accompanying tune was taken. In the twelfth century the monkish
musicians, stirred to bolder flights by the satisfactory results of their
two-part discant, essayed three parts, with results at first childishly
awkward, but with growing ease and smoothness. Free invention of the
accompanying parts took the place of the custom of borrowing the entire
melodic framework, for while two borrowed themes might fit each other, it
was practically impossible to find three that would do so without almost
complete alteration. As a scientific method of writing developed, with
the combination of parallel and contrary motion, the term discant gave
way to counterpoint (Lat. _punctus contra punctum_). But there was never
any thought of inventing the _cantus firmus_; this was invariably taken
from a ritual book or a popular tune, and the whole art of composition
consisted in fabricating melodic figures that would unite with it in an
agreeable synthesis. These contrapuntal devices, at first simple and
often harsh, under the inevitable law of evolution became more free and
mellifluous at the same time that they became more complex. The primitive
discant was one note against one note; later the accompanying part was
allowed to sing several notes against one of the _cantus firmus_. Another
early form consisted of notes interrupted by rests. In the twelfth
century such progress had been made that thirds and sixths were
abundantly admitted, dissonant intervals were made to resolve upon
consonances, consecutive fifths were avoided, passing notes and
embellishments were used in the accompanying voices, and the beginnings
of double counterpoint and imitation appeared. Little advance was made in
the thirteenth century; music was still chiefly a matter of scholastic
theory, a mechanical handicraft. Considerable dexterity had been attained
in the handling of three simultaneous, independent parts. Contrary and
parallel motion alternating for variety's sake, contrast of consonance
and dissonance, a system of notation by which time values as well as
differences of pitch could be indicated, together with a recognition of
the importance of rhythm as an ingredient in musical effect,--all this
foreshadowed the time when the material of tonal art would be plastic in
the composer's hand, and he would be able to mould it into forms of
fluent grace, pregnant with meaning. This final goal was still far away;
the dull, plodding round of apprenticeship must go on through the
fourteenth century also, and the whole conscious aim of effort must be
directed to the invention of scientific combinations which might
ultimately provide a vehicle for the freer action of the imagination.
Example of Discant in Three Parts with Different Words (Twelfth Century).
From Coussemaker, _Histoire de l'harmonie au moyen age_. Translated into
modern notation.
The period from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries was, therefore,
not one of expressive art work, but rather of slow and arduous
experiment. The problem was so to adjust the semi-independent melodious
parts that an unimpeded life might be preserved in all the voices, and
yet the combined effect be at any instant pure and beautiful. The larger
the number of parts, the greater the skill required to weave them
together into a varied, rich, and euphonious pattern. Any one of these
parts might for the moment hold the place of the leading part which the
others were constrained to follow through the mazes of the design. Hence
the term polyphonic, _i.e._, many-voiced. Although each voice part was as
important as any other in this living musical texture, yet each section
took its cue from a single melody--a fragment of a Gregorian chant or a
folk-tune and called the _cantus firmus_, and also known as the tenor,
from _teneo_, to hold--and the voice that gave out this melody came to be
called the tenor voice. In the later phases of this art the first
utterance of the theme was assigned indifferently to any one of the voice
parts.
After confidence had been gained in devising two or more parts to be sung
simultaneously, the next step was to bring in one part after another.
Some method of securing unity amid variety was now necessary, and this
was found in the contrivance known as "imitation," by which one voice
follows another through the same or approximate intervals, the part first
sounded acting as a model for a short distance, then perhaps another
taking up the leadership with a new melodic figure, the intricate network
of parts thus revealing itself as a coherent organism rather than a
fortuitous conjunction of notes, the composer's invention and the
hearers' impression controlled by a conscious plan to which each melodic
part is tributary.
When a number of parts came to be used together, the need of fixing the
pitch and length of notes with precision became imperative. So out of the
antique mnemonic signs, which had done useful service during the
exclusive regime of the unison chant, there was gradually developed a
system of square-headed notes, together with a staff of lines and spaces.
But instead of simplicity a bewildering complexity reigned for centuries.
Many clefs were used, shifting their place on the staff in order to keep
the notes within the lines; subtleties, many and deep, were introduced,
and the matter of rhythm, key relations, contrapuntal structure, and
method of singing became a thing abstruse and recondite. Composition was
more like algebraic calculation than free art; symbolisms of trinity and
unity, of perfect and imperfect, were entangled in the notation, to the
delight of the ingenious monkish intellect and the despair of the
neophyte and the modern student of mediaeval manuscripts. Progress was
slowest at the beginning. It seemed an interminable task to learn to put
a number of parts together with any degree of ease, and for many
generations after it was first attempted the results were harsh and
uncouth.
Even taking into account the obstacles to rapid development which exist
in the very nature of music as the most abstract of the arts, it seems
difficult to understand why it should have been so long in acquiring
beauty and expression. There was a shorter way to both, but the church
musicians would not take it. All around them bloomed a rich verdure of
graceful expressive melody in the song and instrumental play of the
common people. But the monkish musicians and choristers scorned to follow
the lead of anything so artless and obvious. In a scholastic age they
were musical scholastics; subtilty and fine pedantic distinctions were
their pride. They had become infatuated with the formal and technical,
and they seemed indifferent to the claims of the natural and simple while
carried away by a passion for intricate structural problems.
The growth of such an art as this, without models, must necessarily be
painfully slow. Many of the cloistered experimenters passed their lives
in nursing an infant art without seeing enough progress to justify any
very strong faith in the bantling's future. Their floundering
helplessness is often pathetic, but not enough so to overcome a smile at
the futility of their devices. Practice and theory did not always work
amiably together. In studying the chorus music of the Middle Age, we must
observe that, as in the case of the liturgic chant, the singers did not
deem it necessary to confine themselves to the notes actually written. In
this formative period of which we are speaking it was the privilege of
the singers to vary and decorate the written phrases according to their
good pleasure. These adornments were sometimes carefully thought out,
incorporated into the stated method of delivery, and handed down as
traditions.[65] But it is evident that in the earlier days of
counterpoint these variations were often extemporized on the spur of the
moment. The result of this habit on the part of singers who were ignorant
of the laws of musical consonance and proportion, and whose ears were as
dull as their understandings, could easily be conceived even if we did
not have before us the indignant testimony of many musicians and
churchmen of the period. Jean Cotton, in the eleventh century, says that
he could only compare the singers with drunken men, who indeed find their
way home, but do not know how they get there. The learned theorist, Jean
de Muris, of the fourteenth century, exclaims: "How can men have the face
to sing discant who know nothing of the combination of sounds! Their
voices roam around the _cantus firmus_ without regard to any rule; they
throw their tones out by luck, just as an unskilful thrower hurls a
stone, hitting the mark once in a hundred casts." As he broods over the
abuse his wrath increases. "O roughness, O bestiality! taking an ass for
a man, a kid for a lion, a sheep for a fish. They cannot tell a
consonance from a dissonance. They are like a blind man trying to strike
a dog." Another censor apostrophizes the singers thus: "Does such oxen
bellowing belong in the Church? Is it believed that God can be graciously
inclined by such an uproar?" Oelred, the Scottish abbot of Riverby in the
twelfth century, rails at the singers for jumbling the tones together in
every kind of distortion, for imitating the whinnying of horses, or
(worst of all in his eyes) sharpening their voices like those of women.
He tells how the singers bring in the aid of absurd gestures to enhance
the effect of their preposterous strains, swaying their bodies, twisting
their lips, rolling their eyes, and bending their fingers, with each
note. A number of popes, notably John XXII., tried to suppress these
offences, but the extemporized discant was too fascinating a plaything to
be dropped, and ridicule and pontifical rebuke were alike powerless.
Such abuses were, of course, not universal, perhaps not general,--as to
that we cannot tell; but they illustrate the chaotic condition of church
music in the three or four centuries following the first adoption of part
singing. The struggle for light was persistent, and music, however crude
and halting, received abundant measure of the reverence which, in the age
that saw the building of the Gothic cathedrals, was accorded to
everything that was identified with the Catholic religion. There were no
forms of music that could rival the song of the Church,--secular music at
the best was a plaything, not an art. The whole endeavor of the learned
musicians was addressed to the enrichment of the church service, and the
wealthy and powerful princes of France, Italy, Austria, Spain, and
England turned the patronage of music at their courts in the same channel
with the patronage of the Church. It was in the princely chapels of
Northern France and the schools attached to them that the new art of
counterpoint was first cultivated. So far as the line of progress can be
traced, the art originated in Paris or its vicinity, and slowly spread
over the adjacent country. The home of Gothic architecture was the home
of mediaeval chorus music, and the date of the appearance of these two
products is the same. The princes of France and Flanders (the term France
at that period meaning the dominions of the Capetian dynasty) faithfully
guarded the interests of religious music, and the theorists and composers
of this time were officers of the secular government as well as of the
Church. We should naturally suppose that church music would be actively
supported by a king so pious as Robert of France (eleventh century), who
discarded his well-beloved wife at the command of Pope Gregory V. because
she was his second cousin, who held himself pure and magnanimous in the
midst of a fierce and corrupt age, and who composed many beautiful hymns,
including (as is generally agreed) the exquisite Sequence, Veni Sancte
Spiritus. He was accustomed to lead the choir in his chapel by voice and
gesture. He carried on all his journeys a little prayer chamber in the
form of a tent, in which he sang at the stated daily hours to the praise
of God. Louis IX. also, worthily canonized for the holiness of his life,
made the cultivation of church song one of the most urgent of his duties.
Every day he heard two Masses, sometimes three or four. At the canonical
hours hymns and prayers were chanted by his chapel choir, and even on his
crusades his choristers went before him on the march, singing the office
for the day, and the king, a priest by his side, sang in a low voice
after them. Rulers of a precisely opposite character, the craftiest and
most violent in a guileful and brutal age, were zealous patrons of church
music. Even during that era of slaughter and misery when the French
kingship was striding to supremacy over the bodies of the great vassals,
and struggling with England for very existence in the One Hundred Years'
War, the art of music steadily advanced, and the royal and ducal chapels
flourished. Amid such conditions and under such patronage accomplished
musicians were nurtured in France and the Low Countries, and thence they
went forth to teach all Europe the noble art of counterpoint.
About the year 1350 church music had cast off its swaddling bands and had
entered upon the stage that was soon to lead up to maturity. With the
opening of the fifteenth century compositions worthy to be called
artistic were produced. These were hardly yet beautiful according to
modern standards, certainly they had little or no characteristic
expression, but they had begun to be pliable and smooth sounding, showing
that the notes had come under the composer's control, and that he was no
longer an awkward apprentice. From the early part of the fifteenth
century we date the epoch of artistic polyphony, which advanced in purity
and dignity until it culminated in the perfected art of the sixteenth
century. So large a proportion of the fathers and high priests of
mediaeval counterpoint belonged to the districts now included in Northern
France, Belgium, and Holland that the period bounded by the years 1400
and 1550 is known in music history as "the age of the Netherlanders."
With limitless patience and cunning, the French and Netherland musical
artificers applied themselves to the problems of counterpoint, producing
works enormous in quantity and often of bewildering intricacy. Great
numbers of pupils were trained in the convents and chapel schools,
becoming masters in their turn, and exercising commanding influence in
the churches and cloisters of all Europe. Complexity in part writing
steadily increased, not only in combinations of notes, but also in the
means of indicating their employment. It often happened that each voice
must sing to a measure sign that was different from that provided for the
other voices. Double and triple rhythm alternated, the value of notes of
the same character varied in different circumstances; a highly
sophisticated symbolism was invented, known as "riddle canons," by which
adepts were enabled to improvise accompanying parts to the _cantus
firmus_; and counterpoint, single and double, augmented and diminished,
direct, inverted, and retrograde, became at once the end and the means of
musical endeavor. Rhythm was obscured and the words almost hopelessly
lost in the web of crossing parts. The _cantus firmus_, often extended
into notes of portentous length, lost all expressive quality, and was
treated only as a thread upon which this closely woven fabric was strung.
Composers occupied themselves by preference with the mechanical side of
music; quite unimaginative, they were absorbed in solving technical
problems; and so they went on piling up difficulties for their
fellow-craftsmen to match, making music for the eye rather than for the
ear, for the logical faculty rather than for the fancy or the emotion.
It would, however, be an error to suppose that such labored artifice was
the sole characteristic of the scientific music of the fifteenth century.
The same composers who revelled in the exercise of this kind of
scholastic subtlety also furnished their choirs with a vast amount of
music in four, five, and six parts, complex and difficult indeed from the
present point of view, but for the choristers as then trained perfectly
available, in which there was a striving for solemn devotional effect, a
melodious leading of the voices, and the adjustment of phrases into
bolder and more symmetrical patterns. Even among the master fabricators
of musical labyrinths we find glimpses of a recognition of the true final
aim of music, a soul dwelling in the tangled skeins of their polyphony, a
grace and inwardness of expression comparable to the poetic
suggestiveness which shines through the naive and often rude forms of
Gothic sculpture. The growing fondness on the part of the austere church
musicians for the setting of secular poems--madrigals, chansons,
villanellas, and the like--in polyphonic style gradually brought in a
simpler construction, more obvious melody, and a more characteristic and
pertinent expression, which reacted upon the mass and motet in the
promotion of a more direct and flexible manner of treatment The _stile
famigliare_, in which the song moves note against note, syllable against
syllable, suggesting modern chord progression, is no invention of
Palestrina, with whose name it is commonly associated, but appears in
many episodes in the works of his Netherland masters.
The contrapuntal chorus music of the Middle Age reached its maturity in
the middle of the sixteenth century. For five hundred years this art had
been growing, constantly putting forth new tendrils, which interlaced in
luxuriant and ever-extending forms until they overspread all Western
Christendom. It was now given to one man, Giovanni Pierluigi, called
Palestrina from the place of his birth, to put the finishing touches upon
this wonder of mediaeval genius, and to impart to it all of which its
peculiar nature was capable in respect to technical completeness, tonal
purity and majesty, and elevated devotional expression. Palestrina was
more than a flawless artist, more than an Andrea del Sarto; he was so
representative of that inner spirit which has uttered itself in the most
sincere works of Catholic art that the very heart of the institution to
which he devoted his life may be said to find a voice in his music.
Palestrina was born probably in 1526 (authority of Haberl) and died in
1594. He spent almost the whole of his art life as director of music at
Rome in the service of the popes, being at one time also a singer in the
papal chapel. He enriched every portion of the ritual with compositions,
the catalogue of his works including ninety-five masses. Among his
contemporaries at Rome were men such as Vittoria, Marenzio, the Anerios,
and the Naninis, who worked in the same style as Palestrina. Together
they compose the "Roman school" or the "Palestrina school," and all that
may be said of Palestrina's style would apply in somewhat diminished
degree to the writings of this whole group.
Palestrina has been enshrined in history as the "savior of church music"
by virtue of a myth which has until recent years been universally
regarded as a historic fact. The first form of the legend was to the
effect that the reforming Council of Trent (1545-1563) had serious
thoughts of abolishing the chorus music of the Church everywhere, and
reducing all liturgic music to the plain unison chant; that judgment was
suspended at the request of Pope Marcellus II. until Palestrina could
produce a work that should be free from all objectionable features; that
a mass of his composition--the Mass of Pope Marcellus--was performed
before a commission of cardinals, and that its beauty and refinement so
impressed the judges that polyphonic music was saved and Palestrina's
style proclaimed as the most perfect model of artistic music. This tale
has undergone gradual reduction until it has been found that the Council
of Trent contented itself with simply recommending to the bishops that
they exclude from the churches "all musical compositions in which
anything impure or lascivious is mingled," yet not attempting to define
what was meant by "impure" and "lascivious." The commission of cardinals
had jurisdiction only over some minor questions of discipline in the
papal choir, and if Palestrina had the mass in question sung before them
(which is doubtful) it had certainly been composed a number of years
earlier.
Certain abuses that called for correction there doubtless were in church
music in this period. The prevalent practice of borrowing themes from
secular songs for the _cantus firmus_, with sometimes the first few words
of the original song at the beginning--as in the mass of "The Armed Man,"
the "Adieu, my Love" mass, etc.--was certainly objectionable from the
standpoint of propriety, although the intention was never profane, and
the impression received was not sacrilegious. Moreover, the song of the
Church had at times become so artificial and sophisticated as to belie
the true purpose of worship music. But among all the records of complaint
we find only one at all frequent, and that was that the sacred words
could not be understood in the elaborate contrapuntal interweaving of the
voices. In the history of every church, in all periods, down even to the
present time, there has always been a party that discountenances
everything that looks like art for the sake of art, satisfied only with
the simplest and rudest form of music, setting the reception of the
sacred text so far above the pleasure of the sense that all artistic
embellishment seems to them profanation. This class was represented at
the Council of Trent, but it was never in the majority, and never
strenuous for the total abolition of figured music. No reform was
instituted but such as would have come about inevitably from the
ever-increasing refinement of the art and the assertion of the nobler
traditions of the Church in the Counter-Reformation. An elevation of the
ideal of church music there doubtless was at this time, and the genius of
Palestrina was one of the most potent factors in its promotion; but it
was a natural growth, not a violent turning of direction.
The dissipation of the halo of special beatification which certain early
worshipers of Palestrina have attempted to throw about the Mass of Pope
Marcellus has in no wise dimmed its glory. It is not unworthy of the
renown which it has so dubiously acquired. Although many times equalled
by its author, he never surpassed it, and few will be inclined to dispute
the distinction it has always claimed as the most perfect product of
mediaeval musical art. Its style was not new; it does not mark the
beginning of a new era, as certain writers but slightly versed in music
history have supposed, but the culmination of an old one. It is
essentially in the manner of the Netherland school, which the myth-makers
would represent as condemned by the Council of Trent. Josquin des Pres,
Orlandus Lassus, Goudimel, and many others had written music in the same
style, just as chaste and subdued, with the same ideal in mind, and
almost as perfectly beautiful. It is not a simple work, letting the text
stand forth in clear and obvious relief, as the legend would require. It
is a masterpiece of construction, abounding in technical subtleties,
differing from the purest work of the Netherlanders only in being even
more delicately tinted and sweet in melody than the best of them could
attain. It was in the quality of melodious grace that Palestrina soared
above his Netherland masters. Melody, as we know, is the peculiar
endowment of the Italians, and Palestrina, a typical son of Italy,
crowned the Netherland science with an ethereal grace of movement which
completed once for all the four hundred years' striving of contrapuntal
art, and made it stand forth among the artistic creations of the Middle
Age perhaps the most divinely radiant of them all.
It may seem strange at first thought that a form which embodied the
deepest and sincerest religious feeling that has ever been projected in
tones should have been perfected in an age when all other art had become
to a large degree sensuous and worldly, and when the Catholic Church was
under condemnation, not only by its enemies, but also by many of its
grieving friends, for its political ambition, avarice, and corruption.
The papacy was at that moment reaping the inevitable harvest of spiritual
indifference and moral decline, and had fallen upon days of struggle,
confusion, and humiliation. The Lutheran, Calvinistic, and Anglican
revolt had rent from the Holy See some of the fairest of its dominions,
and those that remained were in a condition of political and intellectual
turmoil. That a reform "in head and members" was indeed needed is
established not by the accusations of hostile witnesses alone, but by the
demands of many of the staunchest prelates of the time and the admissions
of unimpeachable Catholic historians. But, as the sequel proved, it was
the head far more than the members that required surgery. The lust for
sensual enjoyments, personal and family aggrandizement, and the pomp and
luxury of worldly power, which had made the papacy of the fifteenth and
first half of the sixteenth centuries a byword in Europe, the decline of
faith in the early ideals of the Church, the excesses of physical and
emotional indulgence which came in with the Renaissance as a natural
reaction against mediaeval repression,--all this had produced a moral
degeneracy in Rome and its dependencies which can hardly be exaggerated.
But the assertion that the Catholic Church at large, or even in Rome, was
wholly given over to corruption and formalism is sufficiently refuted by
the sublime manifestation of moral force which issued in the Catholic
Reaction and the Counter-Reformation, the decrees of the Council of
Trent, and the deeds of such moral heroes as Carlo Borromeo, Phillip
Neri, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Theresa of Jesus, Francis de
Sales, Vincent de Paul, and the founders and leaders of the Capuchins,
Theatines, Ursulines, and other beneficent religious orders, whose lives
and achievements are the glory not only of Catholicism, but of the human
race.
The great church composers of the sixteenth century were kindred to such
spirits as these, and the reviving piety of the time found its most
adequate symbol in the realm of art in the masses and hymns of Palestrina
and his compeers. These men were nurtured in the cloisters and choirs.
The Church was their sole patron, and no higher privilege could be
conceived by them than that of lending their powers to the service of
that sublime institution into which their lives were absorbed. They were
not agitated by the political and doctrinal ferment of the day. No sphere
of activity could more completely remove a man from mundane influences
than the employment of a church musician of that period. The abstract
nature of music as an art, together with the engrossing routine of a
liturgic office, kept these men, as it were, close to the inner sanctuary
of their religion, where the ecclesiastical traditions were strongest and
purest. The music of the Church in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
was unaffected by the influences which had done so much to make other
forms of Italian art ministers to pride and sensual gratification. Music,
through its very limitations, possessed no means of flattering the
appetites of an Alexander VI., the luxurious tastes of a Leo X., or the
inordinate pride of a Julius II. It was perforce allowed to develop
unconstrained along the line of austere tradition. Art forms seem often
to be under the control of a law which requires that when once set in
motion they must run their course independently of changes in their
environment. These two factors, therefore,--the compulsion of an
advancing art demanding completion, and the uncontaminated springs of
piety whence the liturgy and its musical setting drew their life,--will
explain the splendid achievements of religious music in the hands of the
Catholic composers of the sixteenth century amid conditions which would
at first thought seem unfavorable to the nurture of an art so pure and
austere.
Under such influences, impelled by a zeal for the glory of God and the
honor of his Church, the polyphony of the Netherland school put forth its
consummate flower in the "Palestrina style." In the works of this later
school we may distinguish two distinct modes of treatment: (1) the
intricate texture and solidity of Netherland work; (2) the "familiar
style," in which the voices move together in equal steps, without canonic
imitations. In the larger compositions we have a blending and alternation
of these two, and the scholastic Netherland polyphony appears clarified,
and moulded into more plastic outlines for the attainment of a more
refined vehicle of expression.
The marked dissimilarity between the music of the mediaeval school and
that of the present era is to a large extent explained by the differences
between the key and harmonic systems upon which they are severally based.
In the modern system the relationship of notes to the antithetic
tone-centres of tonic and dominant, and the freedom of modulation from
one key to another by means of the introduction of notes that do not
exist in the first, give opportunities for effect which are not
obtainable in music based upon the Gregorian modes, for the reason that
these modes do not differ in the notes employed (since they include only
the notes represented by the white keys of the pianoforte plus the B
flat), but only in the relation of the intervals to the note which forms
the keynote or "final." The concoction of music based on the latter
system is, strictly speaking, melodic, not harmonic in the modern
technical sense, and the resulting combinations of sounds are not
conceived as chords built upon a certain tone taken as a fundamental, but
rather as consequences of the conjunction of horizontally moving series
of single notes. The harmony, therefore, seems both vague and monotonous
to the ear trained in accordance with the laws of modern music, because,
in addition to being almost purely diatonic, it lacks the stable pivotal
points which give symmetry, contrast, and cohesion to modern tone
structure. The old system admits chromatic changes but sparingly, chiefly
in order to provide a leading tone in a cadence, or to obviate an
objectionable melodic interval. Consequently there is little of what we
should call variety or positive color quality. There is no pronounced
leading melody to which the other parts are subordinate. The theme
consists of a few chant-like notes, speedily taken up by one voice after
another under control of the principle of "imitation." For the same
reasons the succession of phrases, periods, and sections which
constitutes the architectonic principle of form in modern music does not
appear. Even in the "familiar style," in which the parts move together
like blocks of chords of equal length, the implied principle is melodic
in all the voices, not tune above and accompaniment beneath; and the
progression is not guided by the necessity of revolving about mutually
supporting tone-centres.
In this "familiar style" which we may trace backward to the age of the
Netherlanders, we find a remote anticipation of the modern harmonic
feeling. A vague sense of complementary colors of tonic and dominant,
caught perhaps from the popular music with which the most scientific
composers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries always kept closely in
touch, is sometimes evident for brief moments, but never carried out
systematically to the end. This plain style is employed in hymns and
short sentences, in connection with texts of an especially mournful or
pleading expression, as, for instance, the Improperia and the Miserere,
or, for contrast's sake, in the more tranquil passages of masses or
motets. It is a style that is peculiarly tender and gracious, and may be
found reflected in the sweetest of modern Latin and English hymn-tunes.
In the absence of chromatic changes it is the most serene form of music
in existence, and is suggestive of the confidence and repose of spirit
which is the most refined essence of the devotional mood.
Example of the Simple Style (_stile famigliare_). Palestrina.
The intricate style commonly prevails in larger works--masses, motets,
and the longer hymns. Only after careful analysis can we appreciate the
wonderful art that has entered into its fabrication. Upon examining works
of this class we find the score consisting of four or more parts, but not
usually exceeding eight. The most obvious feature of the design is that
each part appears quite independent of the others; the melody does not
lie in one voice while the others act as accompaniment, but each part is
as much a melody as any other; each voice pursues its easy, unfettered
way, now one acting as leader, now another, the voices often crossing
each other, each melody apparently quite regardless of its mates in
respect to the time of beginning, culminating, and ending, the voices
apparently not subject to any common law of accent or rhythm, but each
busy with its own individual progress. The onward movement is like a
series of waves; no sooner is the mind fixed upon one than it is lost in
the ordered confusion of those that follow. The music seems also to have
no definite rhythm. Each single voice part is indeed rhythmical, as a
sentence of prose may be rhythmical, but since the melodic constituents
come in upon different parts of the measure, one culminating at one
moment, another at another, the parts often crossing each other, so that
while the mind may be fixed upon one melody which seems to lead, another,
which has been coming up from below, strikes in across the field,--the
result of all this is that the attention is constantly being dislodged
from one tonal centre and shifted to another, and the whole scheme of
design seems without form, a fluctuating mass swayed hither and thither
without coherent plan. The music does not lack dynamic change or
alteration of speed, but these contrasts are often so subtly graded that
it is not apparent where they begin or end. The whole effect is measured,
subdued, solemn. We are never startled, there is nothing that sets the
nerves throbbing. But as we hear this music again and again, analyzing
its properties, shutting out all preconceptions, little by little there
steal over us sensations of surprise, then of wonder, then of admiration.
These delicately shaded harmonies develop unimagined beauties. Without
sharp contrast of dissonance and consonance they are yet full of shifting
lights and hues, like a meadow under breeze and sunshine, which to the
careless eye seems only a mass of unvarying green, but which reveals to
the keener sense infinite modulation of the scale of color. No melody
lies conspicuous upon the surface, but the whole harmonic substance is
full of undulating melody, each voice pursuing its confident, unfettered
motion amid the ingenious complexity of which it is a constituent part.
In considering further the technical methods and the final aims of this
marvellous style, we find in its culminating period that the crown of the
mediaeval contrapuntal art upon its aesthetic side lies in the attainment
of beauty of tone effect in and of itself--the gratification of the
sensuous ear, rich and subtly modulated sound quality, not in the
individual boys' and men's voices, but in the distribution and
combination of voices of different _timbre_. That mastery toward which
orchestral composers have been striving during the past one hundred
years--the union and contrast of stringed and wind instruments for the
production of impressions upon the ear analogous to those produced upon
the eye by the color of a Rembrandt or a Titian--this was also sought,
and, so far as the slender means went, achieved in a wonderful degree by
the tone-masters of the Roman and Venetian schools. The chorus, we must
remind ourselves, was not dependent upon an accompaniment, and sensuous
beauty of tone must, therefore, result not merely from the individual
quality of the voices, but still more from the manner in which the notes
were grouped. The distribution of the components of a chord in order to
produce the greatest sonority; the alternation of the lower voices with
the higher; the elimination of voices as a section approached its close,
until the harmony was reduced at the last syllable to two higher voices
in _pianissimo_, as though the strain were vanishing into the upper air;
the resolution of tangled polyphony into a sun-burst of open golden
chords; the subtle intrusion of veiled dissonances into the fluent
gleaming concord; the skilful blending of the vocal registers for the
production of exquisite contrasts of light and shade,--these and many
other devices were employed for the attainment of delicate and lustrous
sound tints, with results to which modern chorus writing affords no
parallel. The culmination of this tendency could not be reached until the
art of interweaving voices according to regular but flexible patterns had
been fully mastered, and composers had learned to lead their parts with
the confidence with which the engraver traces his lines to shape them
into designs of beauty.
The singular perfection of the work of Palestrina has served to direct
the slight attention which the world now gives to the music of the
sixteenth century almost exclusively to him; yet he was but one master
among a goodly number whose productions are but slightly inferior to
his,--_primus inter pares_. Orlandus Lassus in Munich, Willaert, and the
two Gabrielis, Andrea and Giovanni, and Croce in Venice, the Naninis,
Vittoria, and the Anerios in Rome, Tallis in England, are names which do
not pale when placed beside that of the "prince of music." Venice,
particularly, was a worthy rival of Rome in the sphere of church song.
The catalogue of her musicians who flourished in the sixteenth and early
part of the seventeenth centuries contains the names of men who were
truly sovereigns in their art, not inferior to Palestrina in science,
compensating for a comparative lack of the super-refined delicacy and
tremulous pathos which distinguished the Romans by a larger emphasis upon
contrast, color variety, and characteristic expression. It was as though
the splendors of Venetian painting had been emulated, although in reduced
shades, by these masters of Venetian music. In admitting into their works
contrivances for effect which anticipated a coming revolution in musical
art, the Venetians, rather than the Romans, form the connecting link
between mediaeval and modern religious music. In the Venetian school we
find triumphing over the ineffable calmness and remote impersonality of
the Romans a more individual quality--a strain almost of passion and
stress, and a far greater sonority and pomp. Chromatic changes, at first
irregular and unsystematized, come gradually into use as a means of
attaining greater intensity; dissonances become more pronounced,
foreshadowing the change of key system with all its consequences. The
contrapuntal leading of parts, in whose cunning labyrinths the expression
of feeling through melody strove to lose itself, tended under the
different ideal cherished by the Venetians to condense into more massive
harmonies, with bolder outlines and melody rising into more obvious
relief. As far back as the early decades of the sixteenth century Venice
had begun to loosen the bands of mediaeval choral law, and by a freer use
of dissonances to prepare the ear for a new order of perceptions. The
unprecedented importance given to the organ by the Venetian church
composers, and the appearance of the beginnings of an independent organ
style, also contributed strongly to the furtherance of the new
tendencies. In this broader outlook, more individual stamp, and more
self-conscious aim toward brilliancy the music of Venice simply shared
those impulses that manifested themselves in the gorgeous canvases of her
great painters and in the regal splendors of her public spectacles.
The national love of pomp and ceremonial display was shown in the church
festivals hardly less than in the secular pageants, and all that could
embellish the externals of the church solemnities was eagerly adopted.
All the most distinguished members of the line of Venetian church
composers were connected with the church of St. Mark as choir directors
and organists, and they imparted to their compositions a breadth of tone
and warmth of color fully in keeping with the historic and artistic glory
of this superb temple. The founder of the sixteenth-century Venetian
school was Adrian Willaert, a Netherlander, who was chapel-master at St.
Mark's from 1527 to 1563. It was he who first employed the method which
became a notable feature of the music of St. Mark's, of dividing the
choir and thus obtaining novel effects of contrast and climax by means of
antiphonal chorus singing. The hint was given to Willaert by the
construction of the church, which contains two music galleries opposite
each other, each with its organ. The freer use of dissonances, so
characteristic of the adventurous spirit of the Venetian composers, first
became a significant trait in the writings of Willaert.
The tendency to lay less stress upon interior intricacy and more upon
harmonic strength, striking tone color, and cumulative grandeur is even
more apparent in Willaert's successors at St. Mark's,--Cyprian de Rore,
Claudio Merulo, and the two Gabrielis. Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli
carried the splendid tonal art of Venice to unprecedented heights, adding
a third choir to the two of Willaert, and employing alternate choir
singing, combinations of parts, and massing of voices in still more
ingenious profusion. Winterfeld, the chief historian of this epoch, thus
describes the performance of a twelve-part psalm by G. Gabrieli: "Three
choruses, one of deep voices, one of higher, and the third consisting of
the four usual parts, are separated from each other. Like a tender,
fervent prayer begins the song in the deeper chorus, 'God be merciful
unto us and bless us.' Then the middle choir continues with similar
expression, 'And cause his face to shine upon us.' The higher chorus
strikes in with the words, 'That thy way may be known upon earth.' In
full voice the strain now resounds from all three choirs, 'Thy saving
health among all nations.' The words, 'Thy saving health,' are given with
especial earnestness, and it is to be noticed that this utterance comes
not from all the choirs together, nor from a single one entire, but from
selected voices from each choir in full-toned interwoven parts. We shall
not attempt to describe how energetic and fiery the song, 'Let all the
people praise thee, O God,' pours forth from the choirs in alternation;
how tastefully the master proclaims the words, 'Let the nations be glad
and sing for joy,' through change of measure and limitation to selected
voices from all the choirs; how the words, 'And God shall bless us,' are
uttered in solemn masses of choral song. Language could give but a feeble
suggestion of the magnificence of this music."[66]
Great as Giovanni Gabrieli was as master of all the secrets of mediaeval
counterpoint and also of the special applications devised by the school
of Venice, he holds an even more eminent station as the foremost of the
founders of modern instrumental art, which properly took its starting
point in St. Mark's church in the sixteenth century. These men conceived
that the organ might claim a larger function than merely aiding the
voices here and there, and they began to experiment with independent
performances where the ritual permitted such innovation. So we see the
first upspringing of a lusty growth of instrumental forms, if they may
properly be called forms,--canzonas (the modern fugue in embryo),
toccatas, ricercare (at first nothing more than vocal counterpoint
transferred to the organ), fantasias, etc.,--rambling, amorphous,
incoherent pieces, but vastly significant as holding the promise and
potency of a new art. Of these far-sighted experimenters Giovanni
Gabrieli was easily chief. Consummate master of the ancient forms, he
laid the first pier of the arch which was to connect two epochs; honoring
the old traditions by his achievements in chorus music, and leading his
disciples to perceive possibilities of expression which were to respond
to the needs of a new age.
Another composer of the foremost rank demands attention before we take
leave of the mediaeval contrapuntal school. Orlandus Lassus (original
Flemish Roland de Lattre, Italianized Orlando di Lasso) was a musician
whose genius entitles him to a place in the same inner circle with
Palestrina and Gabrieli. He lived from 1520 to 1594. His most important
field of labor was Munich. In force, variety, and range of subject and
treatment he surpasses Palestrina, but is inferior to the great Roman in
pathos, nobility, and spiritual fervor. His music is remarkable in view
of its period for energy, sharp contrasts, and bold experiments in
chromatic alteration. "Orlando," says Ambros, "is a Janus who looks back
toward the great past of music in which he arose, but also forward toward
the approaching epoch." An unsurpassed master of counterpoint, he yet
depended much upon simpler and more condensed harmonic movements. The
number of his works reaches 2337, of which 765 are secular. His motets
hold a more important place than his masses, and in many of the former
are to be found elements that are so direct and forceful in expression as
almost to be called dramatic. His madrigals and choral songs are
especially notable for their lavish use of chromatics, and also for a
lusty sometimes rough humor, which shows his keen sympathy with the
popular currents that were running strongly in the learned music of his
time. Lassus has more significance in the development of music than
Palestrina, for the latter's absorption in liturgic duties kept him
within much narrower boundaries. Palestrina's music is permeated with the
spirit of the liturgic chant; that of Lassus with the racier quality of
the folk-song. Lassus, although his religious devotion cannot be
questioned, had the temper of a citizen of the world; Palestrina that of
a man of the cloister. Palestrina's music reaches a height of ecstasy
which Lassus never approached; the latter is more instructive in respect
to the tendencies of the time.
Turning again to the analysis of the sixteenth-century chorus and
striving to penetrate still further the secret of its charm, we are
obliged to admit that it is not its purely musical qualities or the
learning and cleverness displayed in its fabrication that will account
for its long supremacy or for the enthusiasm which it has often excited
in an age so remote as our own. Its aesthetic effect can never be quite
disentangled from the impressions drawn from its religious and historic
associations. Only the devout Catholic call feel its full import, for to
him it shares the sanctity of the liturgy,--it is not simply ear-pleasing
harmony, but prayer; not merely a decoration of the holy ceremony, but an
integral part of the sacrifice of praise and supplication. And among
Protestants those who eulogize it most warmly are those whose opinions on
church music are liturgical and austere. Given in a concert hall, in
implied competition with modern chorus music, its effect is feeble. It is
as religious music--ritualistic religious music--identified with what is
most solemn and suggestive in the traditions and ordinances of an ancient
faith, that this antiquated form of art makes its appeal to modern taste.
No other phase of music is so dependent upon its setting.
There can be no question that the Catholic Church has always endeavored,
albeit with a great deal of wavering and inconsistency, to maintain a
certain ideal or standard in respect to those forms of art which she
employs in her work of education. The frequent injunctions of popes,
prelates, councils, and synods for century after century have always held
the same tone upon this question. They have earnestly reminded their
followers that the Church recognizes a positive norm or canon in
ecclesiastical art, that there is a practical distinction between
ecclesiastic art and secular art, and that it is a pious duty on the part
of churchmen to preserve this distinction inviolate. The Church, however,
has never had the courage of this conviction. As J. A. Symonds says, she
has always compromised; and so has every church compromised. The inroads
of secular styles and modes of expression have always been irresistible
except here and there in very limited times and localities. The history
of church art, particularly of church music, is the history of the
conflict between the sacerdotal conception of art and the popular taste.
What, then, is the theory of ecclesiastical art which the heads of the
Catholic Church have maintained in precept and so often permitted to be
ignored in practice? What have been the causes and the results of the
secularization of religious art, particularly music? These questions are
of the greatest practical interest to the student of church music, and
the answers to them will form the centre around which all that I have to
say from this point about Catholic music will mainly turn.
The strict idea of religious art, as it has always stood more or less
distinctly in the thought of the Catholic Church, is that it exists not
for the decoration of the offices of worship (although the gratification
of the senses is not considered unworthy as an incidental end), but
rather for edification, instruction, and inspiration. As stated by an
authoritative Catholic writer: "No branch of art exists for its own sake
alone. Art is a servant, and it serves either God or the world, the
eternal or the temporal, the spirit or the flesh. Ecclesiastical art must
derive its rule and form solely from the Church." "These rules and
determinations [in respect to church art] are by no means arbitrary, no
external accretion; they have grown up organically from within outward,
from the spirit which guides the Church, out of her views and out of the
needs of her worship. And herein lies the justification of her symbolism
and emblematic expression in ecclesiastical art so long as this holds
itself within the limits of tradition. The church of stone must be a
speaking manifestation of the living Church and her mysteries. The
pictures on the walls and on the altars are not mere adornment for the
pleasure of the eye, but for the heart a book full of instruction, a
sermon full of truth. And hereby art is raised to be an instrument of
edification to the believer, it becomes a profound expositor for
thousands, a transmitter and preserver of great ideas for all the
centuries."[67] The Catholic Church in her art would subject the literal
to the ideal, the particular to the general, the definitive to the
symbolic. "The phrase 'emancipation of the individual,'" says Jakob
again, "is not heard in the Church. Art history teaches that the Church
does not oppose the individual conception, but simply restrains that
false freedom which would make art the servant of personal caprice or of
fashion."
The truth of this principle as a fundamental canon of ecclesiastical art
is not essentially affected by the fact that it is only in certain
periods and under favorable conditions that it has been strictly
enforced. Whenever art reaches a certain point in development, individual
determination invariably succeeds in breaking away from tradition. The
attainment of technic, attended by the inevitable pride in technic,
liberates its possessors. The spirit of the Italian religious painters of
the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, content to submit their
skill to further the educational purposes of the Church, could no longer
persist in connection with the growing delight in new technical problems
and the vision of the new fields open to art when face to face with
reality. The conventional treatment of the Memmis and Fra Angelicos was
followed by the naturalistic representation of the Raphaels, the Da
Vincis, and the Titians. The same result has followed where pure art has
decayed, or where no real appreciation of art ever existed. The stage of
church art in its purest and most edifying form is, therefore, only
temporary. It exists in the adolescent period of an art, before the
achievement of technical skill arouses desire for its unhampered
exercise, and when religious ideas are at the same time dominant and
pervasive. Neither is doubt to be cast upon the sincerity of the
religious motive in this phase of art growth when we discover that its
technical methods are identical with those of secular art at the same
period. In fact, this general and conventional style which the Church
finds suited to her ends is most truly characteristic when the artists
have virtually no choice in their methods. The motive of the Gothic
cathedral builders was no less religious because their modes of
construction and decoration were also common to the civic and domestic
architecture of the time. A distinctive ecclesiastical style has never
developed in rivalry with contemporary tendencies in secular art, but
only in unison with them. The historic church styles are also secular
styles, carried to the highest practicable degree of refinement and
splendor. These styles persist in the Church after they have disappeared
in the mutations of secular art; they become sanctified by time and by
the awe which the claim of supernatural commission inspires, and the
world at last comes to think of them as inherently rather than
conventionally religious.
All these principles must be applied to the sixteenth-century _a capella_
music. In fact, there is no better illustration; its meaning and effect
cannot be otherwise understood. Growing up under what seem perfectly
natural conditions, patronized by the laity as well as by the clergy,
this highly organized, severe, and impersonal style was seen, even before
the period of its maturity, to conform to the ideal of liturgic art
cherished by the Church; and now that it has become completely isolated
in the march of musical progress, this conformity appears even more
obvious under contrast. No other form of chorus music has existed so
objective and impersonal, so free from the stress and stir of passion, so
plainly reflecting an exalted spiritualized state of feeling. This music
is singularly adapted to reinforce the impression of the Catholic
mysteries by reason of its technical form and its peculiar emotional
appeal. The devotional mood that is especially nurtured by the Catholic
religious exercises is absorbed and mystical; the devotee strives to
withdraw into a retreat within the inner shrine of religious
contemplation, where no echoes of the world reverberate, and where the
soul may be thrilled by the tremulous ecstasy of half-unveiled heavenly
glory. It is the consciousness of the nearness and reality of the unseen
world that lends such a delicate and reserved beauty to those creations
of Catholic genius in which this ideal has been most directly symbolized.
Of this cloistral mood the church music of the Palestrina age is the most
subtle and suggestive embodiment ever realized in art. It is as far as
possible removed from profane suggestion; in its ineffable calmness, and
an indescribable tone of chastened exultation, pure from every trace of
struggle, with which it vibrates, it is the most adequate emblem of that
eternal repose toward which the believer yearns.
It is not true, however, as often alleged, that this form of music
altogether lacks characterization, and that the style of Kyrie, Gloria,
Crucifixus, Resurrexit, and of the motets and hymns whatever their
subject, is always the same. The old masters were artists as well as
churchmen, and knew how to adapt their somewhat unresponsive material to
the more obvious contrasts of the text; and in actual performance a much
wider latitude in respect to _nuance_ and change of speed was permitted
than could be indicated in the score. We know, also, that the choristers
were allowed great license in the use of embellishments, more or less
florid, upon the written notes, sometimes improvised, sometimes carefully
invented, taught and handed down as a prescribed code, the tradition of
which, in all but a few instances, has been lost. But the very laws of
the Gregorian modes and the strict contrapuntal system kept such
excursions after expression within narrow bounds, and the traditional
view of ecclesiastical art forbade anything like a drastic descriptive
literalism.
This mediaeval polyphonic music, although the most complete example in
art of the perfect adaptation of means to a particular end, could not
long maintain its exclusive prestige. It must be supplanted by a new
style as soon as the transformed secular music was strong enough to react
upon the Church. It was found that a devotional experience that was not
far removed from spiritual trance, which was all that the old music could
express, was not the only mental attitude admissible in worship. The
new-born art strove to give more apt and detailed expression to the
words, and why should not this permission be granted to church music? The
musical revolution of the seventeenth century involved the development of
an art of solo singing and its supremacy over the chorus, the
substitution of the modern major and minor transposing scales for the
Gregorian modal system, a homophonic method of harmony for the mediaeval
polyphony, accompanied music for the _a capella_, secular and dramatic
for religious music, the rise of instrumental music as an independent
art, the transfer of patronage from the Church to the aristocracy and
ultimately to the common people. All the modern forms, both vocal and
instrumental, which have come to maturity in recent times suddenly
appeared in embryo at the close of the sixteenth or early in the
seventeenth century. The ancient style of ecclesiastical music did not
indeed come to a standstill. The grand old forms continued to be
cultivated by men who were proud to wear the mantle of Palestrina; and in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the traditions of the Roman and
Venetian schools of church music have had sufficient vitality to inspire
works not unworthy of comparison with their venerable models. The strains
of these later disciples, however, are but scanty reverberations of the
multitudinous voices of the past. The instrumental mass and motet,
embellished with all the newly discovered appliances of melody, harmony,
rhythm, and tone color, led the art of the Church with flying banners
into wider regions of conquest, and the _a capella_ contrapuntal chorus
was left behind, a stately monument upon the receding shores of the
Middle Age.
[Note. A very important agent in stimulating a revival of interest in the
mediaeval polyphonic school is the St. Cecilia Society, which was founded
at Regensburg in 1868 by Dr. Franz Xaver Witt, a devoted priest and
learned musician, for the purpose of restoring a more perfect relation
between music and the liturgy and erecting a barrier against the
intrusion of dramatic and virtuoso tendencies. Flourishing branches of
this society exist in many of the chief church centres of Europe and
America. It is the patron of schools of music, it has issued periodicals,
books, and musical compositions, and has shown much vigor in making
propaganda for its views.
Not less intelligent and earnest is the Schola Cantorum of Paris, which
is exerting a strong influence upon church music in the French capital
and thence throughout the world by means of musical performances,
editions of musical works, lectures, and publications of books and
essays.]